A paper by Vince Tidwell, Barbie Moreland, and Katie Zemlick (all currently in or formerly members of Sandia’s Earth Systems Analysis Dept.), “Geographic footprint of electricity use for water services in the western US,” was selected by Environmental Science & Technology (ES&T) as the 2014 first runner-up for best paper in the “Environmental Technology” category. [...]

On September 10th, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz released the second Quadrennial Technology Review (QTR 2015), which examines the most promising research, development, demonstration, and deployment (RDD&D) opportunities across energy technologies to effectively address the nation’s energy needs. Specifically, this analysis identifies the important technology RDD&D opportunities across energy supply and end-use in working toward a [...]

Sandia and Photovoltaic Performance Labs, Inc. have partnered on the PVSENSOR project to measure, characterize, and understand modern radiometric instrument intricacies. Such instruments are used to measure the amount of sunlight impinging on a plane and are primarily used as reference devices for PV systems. Two identical sets of 21 radiometers are mounted on the [...]

Sandia and eight other companies and research organizations* will collaborate to advance a distributed power system that can produce cleaner, more efficient electricity. The memorandum of understanding (MOU) focuses on developing an energy-conversion system based on supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO2)/Brayton-cycle technology. Gary Rochau, manager of Sandia’s Advanced Nuclear Concepts Dept. said sCO2/Brayton cycle technology could [...]

Nitrogen and phosphate nutrients are among the largest costs in cultivating algae for biofuel production. Sandia molecular biologists (in Sandia’s Systems Biology Dept.) and Ryan Davis (in Sandia’s Biomass Science and Conversion Technology Dept.) have shown they can recycle ~⅔ of those critical nutrients, and aim to raise the recycling rate to close to 100%. [...]

Stion PV system installed and the Sandia RTC site. Thin-film solar module manufacturer Stion has commissioned a 12 kW fixed latitude ground-mounted photovoltaic (PV) system at the DOE’s New Mexico Regional Test Center (RTC), located at Sandia. The system will be monitored and tested to collect a range of data related to the [...]

Montana State University researchers have added acoustic emission and digital image correlation instrumentation to enhance the data collection capabilities of the substructure test fixture. Wind-turbine blade growth continues to have the largest impact on energy capture and levelized cost of energy (LCOE) reduction. While the 40–45 meter blade is today’s mainstream segment, it [...]

Many theoretical studies show that additional energy can be captured through control of the power-conversion chains (PCCs) of resonant wave-energy converter (WEC) devices. The numerical models employed in these studies are, however, idealized to varying degrees. The objective of the Resilient Nonlinear Controls (RNLC) project is to validate the extent to which control strategies, given [...]

The highly anticipated Department of Energy (DOE) Small Business Vouchers (SBV) pilot opens for business today. Through the pilot, small businesses can apply to access the Department’s world-class facilities and an enterprise of more than 10,000 leading scientists and engineers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley, Oak Ridge, Pacific Northwest, and Sandia national laboratories. [...]

Sandia National Laboratories is a multimission laboratory managed and operated by National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC., a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International, Inc., for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-NA0003525.